When a low-level Walmart employee makes a mistake, they have to face a tribunal of supervisors who grossly overestimate their value and pathetically use what little power they have to lord over them. Meanwhile, when the CEO makes a mistake that costs the company hundreds of millions of dollars, not only do they get to keep their job, but they also get their annual bonus. Then, the people at the bottom lose their jobs because the company needs to make up the financial losses. This world is absurdly broken.
I don't like when people is blaming management for every single problem a game has because it's simply not true, development is both top-down and bottom-up. The studio deserved to be closed down, however the executives that purchased the studio also deserve the can. Accountability should apply to everyone I agree with you on that.
I was chatting with my CEO (not gaming, finance) and he just could not understand why gamers would care if there were non mandatory micro-transactions, or if it was a live service (I guess he had some investments in some larger studios) in his mind, it represented a lower price point for entry for consumers, and a steady revenue stream for developers. Win-win. The conversation stuck with me because he’s a super smart finance guy, he’s just absolutely not a gamer. I think you have a lot of these kind of people making a lot of decisions at these companies. Both movies and video games, they often have no practical interest in the product, so they really can’t see past the balance sheet of what’s trending at other companies.
I mean from the business standpoint he’s right. Though people who actually play games hate micro-transactions because they are cringe, tacky, and distracting. In fact we hate it so much that we are willing to forego the “win win situation”.
Live service can totally work, same as non mandatory micro transactions. The business model is sound, so he’s not wrong. But when you get down to the details and implementation, you definitely need people who are video game savvy to assist in the direction or it’s doomed to fail. Even with them might be doomed to
I really feel after literal decades of buyouts which then lead to layoffs and closures has taught a lot of the developers starting these smaller studios have learned their lessons.... hopefully.
LMAO . Firewalk studios was purchased from PROBABLY MONSTERS INC . They had 8 YEARS to make Concord and even when SONY purchased both Firewalk and the Concord game, SONY had to dump (ALEDGELLY) hundreds of millions of dollars into Concord to make it a MINIMUM PLAYABLE PRODUCT . There's more than enough blame to go around to all parties involved at this point . BUT , whomever at SONY thought CONCORD was going to be the next GRAND EVOLUTION in a hero shooter should fired and never be let back into the gaming industry EVER !!!!! This wasn't a matter of a big CORPO buying up a smaller studio and wrecking it , THIS WAS GRAND DELUSION at it's finest . Concord as a game with how it was , was destined to fail with it's lackluster art style and over the top cringe characters . Until game studios get back to making games for ACTUAL gamers , the downhill slide will continue .
I think the problem isn’t just size, but a lack of vision. If you have someone at the head that has a vision they can be flexible and intelligent about what to keep for that interesting and compelling idea, if the vision is an executive saying ‘let’s do that live service thing…” it’s incredibly bloated and inefficient and what needs to stick around isn’t the fun, they’re losing the plot.
Nobody is sad about Concord being killed but I feel bad for the devs and all that money wasted on a corpse. All of that could have been used for something so much better. I don't understand what Sony is thinking right now. Somehow, this still isn't enough for them to stop making live-service games nobody ever wants.
Corporations only understand money, they need to get hit in the wallet to change. And this year we saw it a few times with big releases (SSKTJL, Concord, SW:outlaws), and number of smaller games. At some point entertainment (movie/tv shows and gaming) industry will have to realize that entertainment why can include serious topic, is first and foremost done for a target group, and should entertain.
Why would they stop? They missed big with Concord but they also struck gold with Helldivers. And they're not gonna just cancel all the other ones they've had in development for years at this point as that would completely kill their output and revenue stream. You're not gonna suddenly just get a slew of single player games just cause they cancel the live service ones. Cause then all of those studios would have to basically start from scratch or pivot entirely which would take years either way. And people are already complaining that Sony doesn't have games.
@OneRandomVictory As if they haven't already cancelled live-service games before. TLOU Factions 2 and that Spider-Verse game. Factions 2 was literally in development since 2018 and they just canned it. For some reason, they gave up on these games but not Concord. Which had no original concept.
This was always going to happen that Firewalk would walk the plank after the collapse of Concord. The surprise is Sony's very poor judgement in buying the studio and greenlighting the project
Exactly! I'm not a Sony apologist, quite the opposite, but Firewalk is to blame here. Sony just fell for the con man! Someone has benefited from that 200 million buyout, and it wasn't Sony!
@@saelesbonsazse9919 nah - I've been through a lot of these buyouts. And closures. And what I can tell you is that what usually happens is the company buys into a studio - but doesn't know how to integrate them, or how to help them get to the finish line. There are usually some alignment issues with goals - but somehow it's never resolved - different cultures etc. Like in all the buyouts and failures I've been through - the first time you see the top management from the buying company - is when they turn up to fire you.
The problem is not the developers themselves, the problem is the upper management. While devs lose their jobs for doing something they’ve been told to do, the higher ups keep their jobs/positions and demand more sh*t games from otherwise great developers. And cycle continues.
@@jessicamacallister9272ok so your telling me you want another game from the same company that made the worst AAA disaster in recent history. Why? Like seriously why nobody care when any else gets fired or shutdown for doing a bad job. Developer are like any other job if doesn’t deliver results why keep it around?
@ This developer was following orders. Don’t pretend you have any morals at all on this one. You are enjoying seeing people suffer. Worst made AAA game - wow are you giving some people passes because you like them.
I struggle to imagine big, Western publishers like Ubisoft or Microsoft making a comeback, but it does seem like there's a lot of awesome stuff emerging from smaller studios in Asia and Europe, like you said. Maybe the industry is going to grow a ton overall, just in a different form
I firmly believe the 40$ price tag killed this game, but not only that I also think it should’ve been released on all platforms Xbox,PS5 and PC to hit the most possible player engagement possible.
The way Sony seemingly is never prepared for a game people actually want to play to be good, while instead focusing all their efforts that almost everyone can point and laugh at, makes me wonder how much longer Sony is willing to continue on this path. They already halved the amount of live service games they were aiming for, yet they still considered games like Concord worth pushing all the way.
For me a big difference with Helldivers 2 vs Concord is that HD2 is coop. This means I can jump in with friends or randoms & play a non-competitive game, regardless of how difficulty it may or may not be at that time it's still a set challenge vs a sweat fest.
I love Black Ops 3 zombies and was excited for BO6, but it being online only is a deal breaker for me. A singleplayer experience shouldn't be forced online because it needlessly makes the experience worse for the gamer. I don't like that they can just remove the game at any moment and abandon the playerbase when they don't want to pay for servers years down the line. I don't like the lag and the disconnects. I don't like the kick timer for a singleplayer mode because they need to keep server space clear. If it ran locally, you could pause, take a bathroom break and a snack in peace, and return where you left off. Not with how BO6 is set up online. It's a shame considering the dev team looks like they put in the time and energy to make a quality product, but the corporate overlords have to keep it online so no mods or funny business affects their precious online storefront. We'll never get to see the beautiful creativity of custom zombies again like BO3.
I genuinely blows my mind how gaming companies completely messed up the pandemic sales boom and turned it into a negative, it should've just been a great bonus giving them a ton more money as a cushion and to play around with. But instead because they moronically assumed it would endlessly continue so they over invested it was apparently a catastrophic disaster they got free money for 2 years. That's like me starting a fireworks shop then seeing a huge sales increase around 4th of July and deciding to open 15 new locations with 100s of staff because surely those sales will continue every week now right?
I don't think this has anything to do with the pandemic. Many the games released in the past year started development before the pandemic - and budgets were set before then. Many of the games that were started during the pandemic are still in development.
Jake, you are absolutely correct. I was once a sweaty online PVP player when Warface was a good game (a decade ago). I was in a clan and the whole 9 yards - spending $20 - $50 a month. I didn't really play much of anything else. I'm 100+ hours in to second playthrough of Prey, and put an obsene amount of time into New Vegas the past year. There's no way I'd have time for that and an online PVP commitment. Also - Started a new game of YMBAB - one of the best recommendations from many, many years ago when ya'll covered mobile!
For a long while now, I've just been playing smaller indie games, like Factorio and Cult of the Lamb, and older AAA games, with the exception of a few standouts that released last year and this year. A LOT of the new stuff from bigger studios have no creativity to them, and they're just all the same games with a new name and another set of skins to sell. With budgets and team sizes as large as they are, they have no room to be unique and take risks, so almost nothing ever changes in the AAA space.
Agree! I've been playing older games I never got around to, indies, and have found that NIS/Falcom have a ton of amazing franchises I haven't touched. I've always played the Ys games but found others. Also,Squares's smaller games like Diofield, Unicorn Overlord, Triangle Strategy, and Crisis Core Reunion were great. The big games from the massive developers are so disappointing.
@matthewbarrios1028 For every bad AAA game out there, there's at least a dozen other games worth your time. There's been over 30-40 years of gaming history, and I'm sure a majority of people haven't experienced 90% of it.
@@pixels_per_minuteindeed, 2024 has had alot of banging games from low to high budget. It's just negativity spreads quicker and possibly the biggest flop in gaming history happened.
I’ve been playing since cod 2 as well! I love the cod campaigns too, that’s what I used to play exclusively before I had Xbox live back in the day lol. It sucks they stopped doing the early releases for it
I personally don't play shooters, but I agree that they can't just "will a live-service game into existence." It has to be a genuinely unique, well crafted game with a legitimate road map of content to keep engagement for an extended period of time. AND, it's STILL going to be a lottery situation whether it succeeds or not with gamers!
I feel like blaming Concord's failure on it not being free to play is a little too optimistic. They tried really hard to get people to play for free during the beta period and most people weren't even interested in playing it for free. I am fairly tapped into the gaming world, though less so as of recently and I didn't even know the beta was occuring or what type of game Concord even was. Poor marketing, bland artistic direction and uncreative game design led to this game being radically uninteresting.
Concord is a cautionary tale or warning, if you will, not only to Sony, but to the industry as whole. With Concord's disastrous failure, one would think that would be a sign for Sony to somewhat re-think their live service approach. With what we know about Marathon so far it is rather concerning: a $40 extraction shooter that's trying to compete in a market that's mostly free-to-play. Those are two things against it right off the bat Unless there's something about Marathon that sparks much appeal (Bungie does make good feeling shooters), the longevity of the game immediately comes to mind. And there's that upcoming PvP heist game called Fairgames and that's the one that's has really a lot of skepticism towards it and rightfully so. Looking from the outside in, I don't know the metrics and barometers Sony sees prompting them to continue this strategy. Live service games are a risky gamble and It's great that Helldivers 2 is doing so well, but not everything is guaranteed to hit that level of success. This ice skating uphill approach will only go so far before their investors start wonder where is the ROI with all of this money being spent.
As blunt as it sounds.. I hope these live service games fail just like Concord. People don't want them. At least not from Playstation Studios that is supposed to be known for premium single player games. I don't want Sony to go down on the "battle pass MTX skin-buying low effort live service" route. Now we are at it, where are those games? There were 3 launch titles in 2020, Astro's Playroom, Demon's Souls and Returnal (last one might not have been launch but still early 1st party). It's been 4 years, entering the 5th year soon. Astro had a sequel, but what the hell are Bluepoint and Housemarque doing for 4 years and not even an announcement? That basically means their games are at least 2 years away if you calculate with the trends of recent times that devs usually tease their projects 1-2 years before release. 6-7 years development cycle for 1 game? That is honestly unacceptable. 1 game per generation? Is that next gen tech they are admittedly putting in games like Demon's Souls worth it if it means 1 game per gen? I don't think so. They are developing for the PS6 already? What the hell is going on at Playstation Studios... We know Naughty Dog had a live service game cancelled and they are also not likely to make a game for this generation anymore. Just a disaster really.
@@avelonzx I don't want any game, live service or not, to fail. Successful games means profit and profit leads to the likelihood of new and better game experiences. PS5 was released during a global pandemic which stifled a lot of development. The fact that we have games come to market like Returnal, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man 2, God of War: Ragnarok, Horizon: Forbidden West DLC and (as much it is frowned upon) Last of Us Part 1 goes to show it has been a reasonable, solid and steady cadence of good games. Four to five year interval has become the norm video game development. Also, consider the number of blockbuster third party lineup as well: Gran Blue Fantasy: Relink, Rise of the Ronin, Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Stellar Blade, Astro Bot, Helldivers 2...despite what some say, I'd say this generation has been pretty good for Sony, especially compared to that other platform, and I don't mean Nintendo. I get any frustration towards Sony holding their cards close to their chests, but I'd prefer that rather than be promised a release date only for it not to arrive, an approach a certain other platform has been doing.
@@DanteMasaru You want badly made low effort games to succeed? That doesn't make any sense. Concord had to fail, and it deserved to fail, and I am glad it failed. If it was a success, that would be bad for the video game industry, period. You learn from failure in any field, you must be young if you think everything will always succeed and we live in shiny rainbow paradise land. Your attitude where you want to reward garbage products just because "oh poor devs" is not how the world works. Make good products, or if the product is terrible I hope it fails so they learn from that failure and do better next time. Any mature adult person would think this way.
@@avelonzx Huh. Maybe you're the young one because one: you're projecting real hard and two: you're taking that "If you speak positively about something I don't like, something must be wrong with you" approach. By "low effort" I assume you are referring to Concord and while it is obvious why that game failed (primarily because it was a $40 game in a heavily saturated market with a relatively lackluster presentation and forgettable characters), low effort was anything but. I played Concord and as a shooter it was polished and pretty decent. Presentation left a lot to be desired, but the developers thought they had something appealing (you have to consider the time when Concord started development). However, an optimal shooter that feels good to play don't mean jack if there's not an audience for it. Here's hoping Concord servers as a warning for Sony. I don't like to see any game fail, even if it's a game I've no interest in. It's interesting how there are people who want a studio to fail and when the layoffs start happening these same people want to get on their Internet soapboxes and indict whatever company. Can't have it both ways.
It definitely wasn't the price tag, it just wasn't what people wanted from a game and didn't catch on. People will pay a lot more than $40 for a game if they think its good.
I call BS on the $40 price tag, especially when games like Helldivers 2 prove it otherwise. The issues behind Concord are a very incompetent studio with incompetent leads at Sony who stupidly overspent on development and acquisition. Then to add, Firewalk needed another studios help to finish their game as they struggled to even get pre-Alpha 6-7 into development. On top of all that, they made an unappealing game for anyone and most gamers and customers showed absolutely no interest in it. In short, they got what they deserved and I have no sympathy for the stupid.
@@JakeBaldino Really?? You're gonna call it an advertisement issue??? Every gamer in the world heard about Concord performance on release day, even saw "generous" reviews to it from IGN before the shutdown. Gamers knew about it and didn't want anything to do with it.
WRONG. It's been proven over and over that it's a competent game, with a beautiful unique style, the problem being it was half a decade TOO LATE. Nobody wants another hero shooter, and that was proven without doubt by the failure of Concord
Jake, don’t forget the Jim Ryan retired, that’s like business sepukku and it wasn’t for no reason. The studio head left Firewalk way before they closed and my guess is that we will see more poeple “moving on to new challenges” before this venture into live service is over. Sunk cost may be a fallacy but investors money isn’t. There will be some accountability, but nowhere near enough.
I have a feeling it'll take at least till 2028 or so till we start seeing more mainstream games that go back to being all in all fun again. Gaming for as popular as it has been was still largely niche. Meaning the developers were focused on modelling games that were pure fun first, everything else later with certain exceptions to the formulae. But with covid, majority of the world shifted in gaming, for game companies this was an opportunity to make the most money possible by creating products that hold mass appeal, all inclusive across all possible demographic and thus just like mainstream Hollywood movies and TV, the developers, the publishers started prioritizing 'cinematic immersion' and all the bells n whistles that come with that territory of being a 'mass entertainer' first and everything else second. Even though I myself am a part of game industry and I know this might come back to bite me in the arse xD YES, we need to shed off the extra unnecessary baggage we've picked up over the years with the pandemic and refocus on creating fun memorable games.
Problem is, I think, is that they marched ahead blindly. There was a lot of talent within the studio. It's a real shame to have shut them down instead of pivoting and having them work on a new project. The blame falls at the highest level, where the genre they were trying to get into, the style they chose, the art direction, the character design, the marketing model - all did not hit, and all seemed woefully disconnected with what pretty much any player of this genre could have said would not interest them - at least not enough to take them away from what they currently play. I think there's a lot more hero shooter fatigue out there too then is talked about.
@@igortolstov487 Maybe. Herman Hulst's message said they would try to find places for some of the employees if they could. It's implied that most are just let go. Disbanding a studio that is clearly talented is a budgetary decision. Can't pay 200 employees while they spend another 4-6 years building a new game from scratch, and I do understand that. I just think its a shame to have to shutter the studio for that reason. Most of those employees are indeed looking for new jobs.
On videogames and studios that stuck to their guns, I recommend Wayfinder. At less than 30 bucks you get a whole lot more than Concord ever did. Also, game companies are waiting for 2025/26 for the "bloodbath" because that's when the new Nintendo console will come out, so other companies are saving their best for that "fight".
My man need a sponsorship with a pizza service so we could get a discount on pizza , then the pizza would really be on him lol . Jake your awesome dude thank you for making videos regardless of free pizza or not😂
I still cannot understand why Concord was a PVP hero shooter of all things. It would be way more unique and cool if it had been a co-op mission-based game about hunting bounties as a crew on a spaceship. That idea fulfills the GOTG fantasy so much more than "Overwatch from Wish"
Such a good point about not having enough time to play everything - I played valorant for a couple months and now I’m off that bc other games have come out. Idk what these companies are thinking at this point…but capitalism is built on infinite growth and that’s just impossible for consumers to keep up.
Funny how Sony coulda switched gears and started pumping money into helldivers, but they probably saw the microtransactions in the game are all completely optional and not predatory at all and didn't think they could make billions off of it.
It'll be better if corporations finally give up on live services. I get that their profits are thin right now, but a simpler way to fix that would be to cut down on graphic costs.
All I want from 2025 is for so many studios to not be shut down, especially after only one questionable release. Go back to the 2000’s or even the early 2010’s and you’ll see so many companies that hard to get their toes wet before they went swimming. If Rocksteady shut down after a mediocre PS2 game, we never would have gotten Arkham. If FromSoftware shut down after some adequate games for years, we never would have gotten Souls. If a game flops, there should be equal responsibility placed on executives rather than developers. I’m just tired of hearing about talented people losing their jobs
Between work and family lives, I only have an hour or 2 a day to game if I get that chance and I already got my hero shooter I fall back on when I don’t have something to play, I definitely would have checked it out if it was free but im not gonna waste $40 on another hero shooter in a sea of free ones
The 40$ price tag always weirded me out since they announced the release and price. It almost felt like they saw the success of Helldivers and thought they set a new standard on pricing live service games. They immediately jumped on board with the new $70 precedent set by COD so that’s why it makes sense to me if they tried the $40 price point for a game that barely even had preorders. Sucks to see the studio shut down, I hope they all find worthwhile endeavors that doesn’t work them into dust
They will never admit or acknowledge the fact that the modern audience “activists “ don’t play video games let alone shooters , and Jake has never addressed the elephant in the room. You’re not wrong don’t let these people gaslight you into thinking that it’s anything other than that .
Cenciende9401 NOBODY 7 years ago would have bought this. That art was the biggest pile of garbage that I've ever seen! There is no "hook" to it and acting like people don't have standards in art style is asking to be proven wrong.
some of my favorite games have been made by single developers or small teams. they tend to be more focused and have more love for what they are creating.
Keep your toxic crap to yourself, no less love goes into any other game, it's a matter of how many cooks are in the kitchen, every single person in the kitchen is there out of love for what they do even if there are 100 of them
I think it's a trend for studios to put things in games they know players will hate. Not only are the characters horrible, there's no way I could spend 5 minutes in the game with those colors all over the place. The purple is the ugliest purple I've ever seen. There's good games out there. No one needs games like this.
Gaming growth expanding in 2025 only makes sense as Switch 2.0 should be out next year. If not i have my doubts it will grow with how hard things are for everyone
I really was hoping they would figure out how to make Concord a single-player story game. I enjoyed the Guardians of the Galaxy vibe of that first trailer, but I basically never play online.
2025 has the potential to be the greatest year for gaming, you have GTA 6, Monster Hunter Wilds, Doom The Dark Ages, Metroid Prime 4, Death Stranding 2, etc. Plus, we don't know what games the Switch successor will launch with.
If these companies can learn what the average games wants and doesn’t want than it will get better. Unfortunately making a good game isn’t the only thing on their agenda and usually not even the most important thing
Ahh it's not a new thing about teams getting smaller, Konami has been doing this since like 2010 since I worked at Castlevania Lords of Shadow. They were outsourcing everything to Spain for the past 15+ years.
I think analysts are probably looking at switch 2 and gta 6, but I would love to also have a banger year of releases and to be flushed with extras cash as well
This happened in 2010 - a lot of games were cancelled and funding dried up for games after the global crash. Of course... publishers suddenly found they had a lack of games to release a few years later. It's definitely a phenomenon.
I've seen the argument that future game devs are learning bad habits and bad storytelling playing todays games, and it makes sense... except the devs making concord, that vampire one i can't even remember the name of, the day before, etc. Are theoretically the people who grew up learning from stuff like the first last of us, mass effect, etc. My hope is future devs get tired of this slop and are given motivation to create timeless stories we haven't seen for a while now.
Are you guys on gameranx or you here gonna talk about the new dragon age? Ive been waiting to see what you think about it. I heard they only gave the media that would give high review scores only got a review copy of the game so guessing gameranx didn't get that 😅
I hope more studios shut down next year, not because I want the world to burn but so that the remaining studios will go back to their roots of appealing to what gamers want instead of just focusing on how they can milk every penny from gamers, the greed and political woke stuff has to go! If that means more studios shutting down then so be it, it will give way and room for other studios that actually care about making good fun games that gamers enjoy a chance to flourish. Keep on boycotting these corrupt studios and supporting those that actually care and love what they do and want you to enjoy yourself, only then can gaming return to its former glory.
the devs worked on games like Halo, Mass Effect, CoD, Apex Legends and the studio was founded by ex Bungie devs. They were definitely veterans and deserved the title.
GTA 6 is a time bomb that every game company have to be weary of. Heck, I imagine PS5 consoles sales skyrocket months before it release(or whenever that is announced)
"there's only so much time for live service games" should be hot iron stamped on the face of executives so they can see that every time they look themselves in the mirror. Helldivers 2 was actually a miracle that it worked, but it had a certain x factor. If the market is not already at saturation, it's not far off. So, for a live service game to succeed, another one (like Destiny) needs to take a fall, or at the very best for all to share slices of the pie (market). There were live games that were actually good and still failed due to (over)saturation. Bottom line: going for a live service game now is like getting into the crypto market now with a new coin.
I actually watched Jason S. On Adam Conovers podcast where they were talking about what feels like a downfall in gaming. And he brought up Team Sizes there too, the real crux of a lot of issues. Good call-out Jake!
Hey any comment on all this dragon age drama? Since I trust yall so much I’ve been watching out for your review. Were you one of the ones that didn’t get a review code?
ngl it's been a weird gaming year for me. I've never played a hero shooter before and absolutely fell in love with Concord, particularly it's design elements and more casual competitive side that's encouraged varied game. On the other hand, Helldivers II was great for me at launch but got incredibly tiresome incredibly fast to the point where I actually dislike it at this point. I recognize I'm not the average gamer, but when Concord came out it felt like something truly made for me and I'm crushed that it's gone.
The team size may be an issue, but only in some cases. You point out rightfully so the distance and the communication. These are cases where you mess up a lot of things if not planning carefully, and once you mess up there is no coming back. But for the case specifically of Concord, it was just a mix of a bland game where they asked for 40 bucks and nobody really wanted it.
I literally just switched my FFXIV sub to try out WoW for the first time in 15 years lol. There's truly not enough time in the day to play all the games
A game (and failure) that I find kinda has some overlap with Concord is Battlefield 5's Firestorm mode. It came out during a time when BR games were a dime a dozen, but instead of it being free like most BR games you had to pay to play Firestorm via ownership of the BF5 base game. BF5 was also panned (particularly at launch) for its poor/uninteresting character design just like Concord, and obviously the support for Firestorm was dropped earlier than intended just like Concord's was, even though Firestorm of course had a better run. I think the market strategy for both really hurt them, particularly Firestorm. Where I think they really differ is that I don't know if making Concord free would have changed the tepid reception it received, and I don't think the game would've stuck around for long even if that was their approach. Just didn't have the right bones and design, and I think that's super unfortunate.
When a low-level Walmart employee makes a mistake, they have to face a tribunal of supervisors who grossly overestimate their value and pathetically use what little power they have to lord over them. Meanwhile, when the CEO makes a mistake that costs the company hundreds of millions of dollars, not only do they get to keep their job, but they also get their annual bonus. Then, the people at the bottom lose their jobs because the company needs to make up the financial losses. This world is absurdly broken.
I don't like when people is blaming management for every single problem a game has because it's simply not true, development is both top-down and bottom-up. The studio deserved to be closed down, however the executives that purchased the studio also deserve the can. Accountability should apply to everyone I agree with you on that.
2025 will be better if you get us that damn pizza 👀
He was saying his gets pizza on his shirt every single day, not that he was gonna get us pizza.
Damn it, you beat me to it
😂
Still waiting Jake!
ive gotta be owed like...at least a hundred pizzas by now!
I was chatting with my CEO (not gaming, finance) and he just could not understand why gamers would care if there were non mandatory micro-transactions, or if it was a live service (I guess he had some investments in some larger studios) in his mind, it represented a lower price point for entry for consumers, and a steady revenue stream for developers. Win-win. The conversation stuck with me because he’s a super smart finance guy, he’s just absolutely not a gamer. I think you have a lot of these kind of people making a lot of decisions at these companies. Both movies and video games, they often have no practical interest in the product, so they really can’t see past the balance sheet of what’s trending at other companies.
great insight!
@@mchammer5592 tell him that communism doesn't work because people like to own things. Finance guy should understand that.
I mean from the business standpoint he’s right. Though people who actually play games hate micro-transactions because they are cringe, tacky, and distracting. In fact we hate it so much that we are willing to forego the “win win situation”.
Live service can totally work, same as non mandatory micro transactions. The business model is sound, so he’s not wrong. But when you get down to the details and implementation, you definitely need people who are video game savvy to assist in the direction or it’s doomed to fail. Even with them might be doomed to
@@tonyzhao4060 I would say people more so hate them because they take away developer time away from the experience of the game.
I hope all the indie/smaller studios don't fall for the major companies buyout... It could do them more harm than good.
I agree, everytime it happens it always ends poorly.
I really feel after literal decades of buyouts which then lead to layoffs and closures has taught a lot of the developers starting these smaller studios have learned their lessons.... hopefully.
LMAO . Firewalk studios was purchased from PROBABLY MONSTERS INC . They had 8 YEARS to make Concord and even when SONY purchased both Firewalk and the Concord game, SONY had to dump (ALEDGELLY) hundreds of millions of dollars into Concord to make it a MINIMUM PLAYABLE PRODUCT . There's more than enough blame to go around to all parties involved at this point . BUT , whomever at SONY thought CONCORD was going to be the next GRAND EVOLUTION in a hero shooter should fired and never be let back into the gaming industry EVER !!!!! This wasn't a matter of a big CORPO buying up a smaller studio and wrecking it , THIS WAS GRAND DELUSION at it's finest . Concord as a game with how it was , was destined to fail with it's lackluster art style and over the top cringe characters . Until game studios get back to making games for ACTUAL gamers , the downhill slide will continue .
Meanwhile Microsoft and Embracer completely butchering and laying off studios 💀💀💀
Sorry but money talks. If you can get millions of dollars from selling your studio, you do that.
2:16 just say SkillUp
Our poor boy Ralph catching a stray right out of the gate
Finally got Cult of the lamb thanks to you. I love it! Thanks for all you do! ♥️
hell yeah! great game. I never played the DLC but I want to
Heck yeah, that game is great. It has couch co op now too.
“Destiny weirdos” - don’t insult SkillUp like that
I think the problem isn’t just size, but a lack of vision. If you have someone at the head that has a vision they can be flexible and intelligent about what to keep for that interesting and compelling idea, if the vision is an executive saying ‘let’s do that live service thing…” it’s incredibly bloated and inefficient and what needs to stick around isn’t the fun, they’re losing the plot.
Hi Jake I’m newish to the channel and would love a quick video on what you thought about MGSV now that we are almost 10 years in! Much love
cheers! noted.
Nobody is sad about Concord being killed but I feel bad for the devs and all that money wasted on a corpse.
All of that could have been used for something so much better. I don't understand what Sony is thinking right now. Somehow, this still isn't enough for them to stop making live-service games nobody ever wants.
The devs sealed their own fate when hiring incompetent social activists and engaging in weird pronoun bullying practices.
Corporations only understand money, they need to get hit in the wallet to change.
And this year we saw it a few times with big releases (SSKTJL, Concord, SW:outlaws), and number of smaller games.
At some point entertainment (movie/tv shows and gaming) industry will have to realize that entertainment why can include serious topic, is first and foremost done for a target group, and should entertain.
Why would they stop? They missed big with Concord but they also struck gold with Helldivers. And they're not gonna just cancel all the other ones they've had in development for years at this point as that would completely kill their output and revenue stream. You're not gonna suddenly just get a slew of single player games just cause they cancel the live service ones. Cause then all of those studios would have to basically start from scratch or pivot entirely which would take years either way. And people are already complaining that Sony doesn't have games.
sony is the WORST company in the history of gaming
@OneRandomVictory As if they haven't already cancelled live-service games before. TLOU Factions 2 and that Spider-Verse game. Factions 2 was literally in development since 2018 and they just canned it.
For some reason, they gave up on these games but not Concord. Which had no original concept.
Sony: "We are shutting down our biggest failure..... Concord."
Nintendo (Mario & Luigi Brothership): "WELCOME TO *CONCORDIA!"*
This was always going to happen that Firewalk would walk the plank after the collapse of Concord. The surprise is Sony's very poor judgement in buying the studio and greenlighting the project
Exactly! I'm not a Sony apologist, quite the opposite, but Firewalk is to blame here. Sony just fell for the con man! Someone has benefited from that 200 million buyout, and it wasn't Sony!
@@saelesbonsazse9919 nah - I've been through a lot of these buyouts. And closures. And what I can tell you is that what usually happens is the company buys into a studio - but doesn't know how to integrate them, or how to help them get to the finish line. There are usually some alignment issues with goals - but somehow it's never resolved - different cultures etc. Like in all the buyouts and failures I've been through - the first time you see the top management from the buying company - is when they turn up to fire you.
In the future when companies put out a game, and it flops so hard it puts your company in jeopardy, people will say "well they Sonied themselves"
That studio closing is actually good news. Devs are facing consequences for making bad products. The alternative is just more bad products.
No. People losing their jobs is not a good thing.
The problem is not the developers themselves, the problem is the upper management. While devs lose their jobs for doing something they’ve been told to do, the higher ups keep their jobs/positions and demand more sh*t games from otherwise great developers. And cycle continues.
@@jessicamacallister9272 if it's not a good thing then why am I so happy about it?
@@jessicamacallister9272ok so your telling me you want another game from the same company that made the worst AAA disaster in recent history. Why? Like seriously why nobody care when any else gets fired or shutdown for doing a bad job. Developer are like any other job if doesn’t deliver results why keep it around?
@ This developer was following orders. Don’t pretend you have any morals at all on this one. You are enjoying seeing people suffer. Worst made AAA game - wow are you giving some people passes because you like them.
The Cold War and Black Ops 6 campaigns were really fun and underrated especially with the stories told
200 million. Think about what you could design with that money even if you never designed a game before!!
that's a lot of cheddar
could buy enough baby oil to last a week at my friends party.
Red dead 2 cost roughly 200mil..... THAT'S what you can make with that money...... Think about it
Probably 4-5 AA games or 2 smaller AAA games or one large hallmark AAA title.
Overall $400 Million Failure
I enjoyed playing the CoD 6 campaign with my dad, passing the controller back and forth whenever one of us died.
I struggle to imagine big, Western publishers like Ubisoft or Microsoft making a comeback, but it does seem like there's a lot of awesome stuff emerging from smaller studios in Asia and Europe, like you said. Maybe the industry is going to grow a ton overall, just in a different form
Exactly. I don't see a big comeback next year. I didn't mind this year either. I've been able to catch up on plenty of other games.
I firmly believe the 40$ price tag killed this game, but not only that I also think it should’ve been released on all platforms Xbox,PS5 and PC to hit the most possible player engagement possible.
The way Sony seemingly is never prepared for a game people actually want to play to be good, while instead focusing all their efforts that almost everyone can point and laugh at, makes me wonder how much longer Sony is willing to continue on this path. They already halved the amount of live service games they were aiming for, yet they still considered games like Concord worth pushing all the way.
Concord is the sunk cost fallacy in action.
"What has sony learned here"
Lololololololololol cmon bro cmooon
"accountability for executives"
Dude lololololol
"accountability for executives" is kind of a joke ngl
Executives only fall up, with golden parachutes.
sony goes bankrupt before 2027
Deeper cuts on your “extra thing”!!! I really love to hear your obscure takes on stuff i’ve never heard of.
I’d sub to an “extra thing” channel lmao
Jake I really love that optimism you have keep going god bless 💯
For me a big difference with Helldivers 2 vs Concord is that HD2 is coop. This means I can jump in with friends or randoms & play a non-competitive game, regardless of how difficulty it may or may not be at that time it's still a set challenge vs a sweat fest.
Your dog is beautiful congrats Jake, also I too like the COD campaigns, they are fun.
There's that beautiful head of hair!
That’s a smart prediction. The switch 2 comes out next year AND probably GTA 6. Those are 2 HUGE
When you said "weird friend who plays Destiny", why do I think I know who you are talking about??😂😂
thank God Firewalk isn't a shit stain on gaming anymore
I love Black Ops 3 zombies and was excited for BO6, but it being online only is a deal breaker for me. A singleplayer experience shouldn't be forced online because it needlessly makes the experience worse for the gamer. I don't like that they can just remove the game at any moment and abandon the playerbase when they don't want to pay for servers years down the line. I don't like the lag and the disconnects. I don't like the kick timer for a singleplayer mode because they need to keep server space clear. If it ran locally, you could pause, take a bathroom break and a snack in peace, and return where you left off. Not with how BO6 is set up online. It's a shame considering the dev team looks like they put in the time and energy to make a quality product, but the corporate overlords have to keep it online so no mods or funny business affects their precious online storefront. We'll never get to see the beautiful creativity of custom zombies again like BO3.
I genuinely blows my mind how gaming companies completely messed up the pandemic sales boom and turned it into a negative, it should've just been a great bonus giving them a ton more money as a cushion and to play around with. But instead because they moronically assumed it would endlessly continue so they over invested it was apparently a catastrophic disaster they got free money for 2 years.
That's like me starting a fireworks shop then seeing a huge sales increase around 4th of July and deciding to open 15 new locations with 100s of staff because surely those sales will continue every week now right?
I don't think this has anything to do with the pandemic. Many the games released in the past year started development before the pandemic - and budgets were set before then. Many of the games that were started during the pandemic are still in development.
Jake, you are absolutely correct. I was once a sweaty online PVP player when Warface was a good game (a decade ago). I was in a clan and the whole 9 yards - spending $20 - $50 a month. I didn't really play much of anything else. I'm 100+ hours in to second playthrough of Prey, and put an obsene amount of time into New Vegas the past year. There's no way I'd have time for that and an online PVP commitment. Also - Started a new game of YMBAB - one of the best recommendations from many, many years ago when ya'll covered mobile!
For a long while now, I've just been playing smaller indie games, like Factorio and Cult of the Lamb, and older AAA games, with the exception of a few standouts that released last year and this year.
A LOT of the new stuff from bigger studios have no creativity to them, and they're just all the same games with a new name and another set of skins to sell.
With budgets and team sizes as large as they are, they have no room to be unique and take risks, so almost nothing ever changes in the AAA space.
Agree! I've been playing older games I never got around to, indies, and have found that NIS/Falcom have a ton of amazing franchises I haven't touched. I've always played the Ys games but found others. Also,Squares's smaller games like Diofield, Unicorn Overlord, Triangle Strategy, and Crisis Core Reunion were great. The big games from the massive developers are so disappointing.
@matthewbarrios1028 For every bad AAA game out there, there's at least a dozen other games worth your time.
There's been over 30-40 years of gaming history, and I'm sure a majority of people haven't experienced 90% of it.
@@pixels_per_minuteindeed, 2024 has had alot of banging games from low to high budget.
It's just negativity spreads quicker and possibly the biggest flop in gaming history happened.
I’ve been playing since cod 2 as well! I love the cod campaigns too, that’s what I used to play exclusively before I had Xbox live back in the day lol. It sucks they stopped doing the early releases for it
I personally don't play shooters, but I agree that they can't just "will a live-service game into existence." It has to be a genuinely unique, well crafted game with a legitimate road map of content to keep engagement for an extended period of time. AND, it's STILL going to be a lottery situation whether it succeeds or not with gamers!
I feel like blaming Concord's failure on it not being free to play is a little too optimistic. They tried really hard to get people to play for free during the beta period and most people weren't even interested in playing it for free. I am fairly tapped into the gaming world, though less so as of recently and I didn't even know the beta was occuring or what type of game Concord even was. Poor marketing, bland artistic direction and uncreative game design led to this game being radically uninteresting.
My 1½ year old son (Robin huge Batman fan also) runs to the TV anytime he hears your voice
Concord is a cautionary tale or warning, if you will, not only to Sony, but to the industry as whole. With Concord's disastrous failure, one would think that would be a sign for Sony to somewhat re-think their live service approach.
With what we know about Marathon so far it is rather concerning: a $40 extraction shooter that's trying to compete in a market that's mostly free-to-play. Those are two things against it right off the bat
Unless there's something about Marathon that sparks much appeal (Bungie does make good feeling shooters), the longevity of the game immediately comes to mind.
And there's that upcoming PvP heist game called Fairgames and that's the one that's has really a lot of skepticism towards it and rightfully so. Looking from the outside in, I don't know the metrics and barometers Sony sees prompting them to continue this strategy.
Live service games are a risky gamble and It's great that Helldivers 2 is doing so well, but not everything is guaranteed to hit that level of success. This ice skating uphill approach will only go so far before their investors start wonder where is the ROI with all of this money being spent.
well said. I'm concerned about Marathon.
As blunt as it sounds.. I hope these live service games fail just like Concord. People don't want them. At least not from Playstation Studios that is supposed to be known for premium single player games. I don't want Sony to go down on the "battle pass MTX skin-buying low effort live service" route.
Now we are at it, where are those games? There were 3 launch titles in 2020, Astro's Playroom, Demon's Souls and Returnal (last one might not have been launch but still early 1st party). It's been 4 years, entering the 5th year soon. Astro had a sequel, but what the hell are Bluepoint and Housemarque doing for 4 years and not even an announcement? That basically means their games are at least 2 years away if you calculate with the trends of recent times that devs usually tease their projects 1-2 years before release. 6-7 years development cycle for 1 game? That is honestly unacceptable. 1 game per generation? Is that next gen tech they are admittedly putting in games like Demon's Souls worth it if it means 1 game per gen? I don't think so. They are developing for the PS6 already? What the hell is going on at Playstation Studios... We know Naughty Dog had a live service game cancelled and they are also not likely to make a game for this generation anymore. Just a disaster really.
@@avelonzx I don't want any game, live service or not, to fail. Successful games means profit and profit leads to the likelihood of new and better game experiences.
PS5 was released during a global pandemic which stifled a lot of development. The fact that we have games come to market like Returnal, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Gran Turismo 7, Spider-Man 2, God of War: Ragnarok, Horizon: Forbidden West DLC and (as much it is frowned upon) Last of Us Part 1 goes to show it has been a reasonable, solid and steady cadence of good games.
Four to five year interval has become the norm video game development. Also, consider the number of blockbuster third party lineup as well: Gran Blue Fantasy: Relink, Rise of the Ronin, Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Stellar Blade, Astro Bot, Helldivers 2...despite what some say, I'd say this generation has been pretty good for Sony, especially compared to that other platform, and I don't mean Nintendo.
I get any frustration towards Sony holding their cards close to their chests, but I'd prefer that rather than be promised a release date only for it not to arrive, an approach a certain other platform has been doing.
@@DanteMasaru You want badly made low effort games to succeed? That doesn't make any sense. Concord had to fail, and it deserved to fail, and I am glad it failed. If it was a success, that would be bad for the video game industry, period. You learn from failure in any field, you must be young if you think everything will always succeed and we live in shiny rainbow paradise land. Your attitude where you want to reward garbage products just because "oh poor devs" is not how the world works. Make good products, or if the product is terrible I hope it fails so they learn from that failure and do better next time. Any mature adult person would think this way.
@@avelonzx Huh. Maybe you're the young one because one: you're projecting real hard and two: you're taking that "If you speak positively about something I don't like, something must be wrong with you" approach.
By "low effort" I assume you are referring to Concord and while it is obvious why that game failed (primarily because it was a $40 game in a heavily saturated market with a relatively lackluster presentation and forgettable characters), low effort was anything but.
I played Concord and as a shooter it was polished and pretty decent. Presentation left a lot to be desired, but the developers thought they had something appealing (you have to consider the time when Concord started development). However, an optimal shooter that feels good to play don't mean jack if there's not an audience for it. Here's hoping Concord servers as a warning for Sony.
I don't like to see any game fail, even if it's a game I've no interest in. It's interesting how there are people who want a studio to fail and when the layoffs start happening these same people want to get on their Internet soapboxes and indict whatever company. Can't have it both ways.
I want the Rampage series to come back
It definitely wasn't the price tag, it just wasn't what people wanted from a game and didn't catch on. People will pay a lot more than $40 for a game if they think its good.
Jake what product do you use in your hair?
I call BS on the $40 price tag, especially when games like Helldivers 2 prove it otherwise. The issues behind Concord are a very incompetent studio with incompetent leads at Sony who stupidly overspent on development and acquisition. Then to add, Firewalk needed another studios help to finish their game as they struggled to even get pre-Alpha 6-7 into development. On top of all that, they made an unappealing game for anyone and most gamers and customers showed absolutely no interest in it. In short, they got what they deserved and I have no sympathy for the stupid.
one thing I forgot to mention - they put it out to die and didn't even advertise it. at least I didn't see any
@@JakeBaldino Sony should of pulled a Sega with Hyenas and drop the game before launch.
@@JakeBaldino Really?? You're gonna call it an advertisement issue??? Every gamer in the world heard about Concord performance on release day, even saw "generous" reviews to it from IGN before the shutdown. Gamers knew about it and didn't want anything to do with it.
WRONG. It's been proven over and over that it's a competent game, with a beautiful unique style, the problem being it was half a decade TOO LATE. Nobody wants another hero shooter, and that was proven without doubt by the failure of Concord
I appreciate your shows Jake. Keep doing this.
People are looking around like “yeah no more bs bruh”
Hey, good news is that the PoP Lost Crown team is apparently moved and now working on a new Rayman game.
The fair thing would’ve been to fire the execs responsible for Concord, not the studio.
Jake, don’t forget the Jim Ryan retired, that’s like business sepukku and it wasn’t for no reason. The studio head left Firewalk way before they closed and my guess is that we will see more poeple “moving on to new challenges” before this venture into live service is over. Sunk cost may be a fallacy but investors money isn’t. There will be some accountability, but nowhere near enough.
I wish they would get rid of the shareholders. They seem to be ruining more games than the publishers.
I have a feeling it'll take at least till 2028 or so till we start seeing more mainstream games that go back to being all in all fun again. Gaming for as popular as it has been was still largely niche. Meaning the developers were focused on modelling games that were pure fun first, everything else later with certain exceptions to the formulae.
But with covid, majority of the world shifted in gaming, for game companies this was an opportunity to make the most money possible by creating products that hold mass appeal, all inclusive across all possible demographic and thus just like mainstream Hollywood movies and TV, the developers, the publishers started prioritizing 'cinematic immersion' and all the bells n whistles that come with that territory of being a 'mass entertainer' first and everything else second.
Even though I myself am a part of game industry and I know this might come back to bite me in the arse xD YES, we need to shed off the extra unnecessary baggage we've picked up over the years with the pandemic and refocus on creating fun memorable games.
Great insight! Hope this doesn't bite you in the ass lol
Problem is, I think, is that they marched ahead blindly. There was a lot of talent within the studio. It's a real shame to have shut them down instead of pivoting and having them work on a new project. The blame falls at the highest level, where the genre they were trying to get into, the style they chose, the art direction, the character design, the marketing model - all did not hit, and all seemed woefully disconnected with what pretty much any player of this genre could have said would not interest them - at least not enough to take them away from what they currently play. I think there's a lot more hero shooter fatigue out there too then is talked about.
They will work on other projects. On different teams. Studio had to go
@@igortolstov487 Maybe. Herman Hulst's message said they would try to find places for some of the employees if they could. It's implied that most are just let go. Disbanding a studio that is clearly talented is a budgetary decision. Can't pay 200 employees while they spend another 4-6 years building a new game from scratch, and I do understand that. I just think its a shame to have to shutter the studio for that reason. Most of those employees are indeed looking for new jobs.
We need some Jake Rainbow Six Siege gameplay 😂
lets take a step back an look at this objectively. no work went into this. designed by committee; thats true. but where did the money go?
The ~$200 million number that’s thrown around is insane. It certainly doesn’t translate to the “final” product we saw.
On videogames and studios that stuck to their guns, I recommend Wayfinder. At less than 30 bucks you get a whole lot more than Concord ever did.
Also, game companies are waiting for 2025/26 for the "bloodbath" because that's when the new Nintendo console will come out, so other companies are saving their best for that "fight".
My man need a sponsorship with a pizza service so we could get a discount on pizza , then the pizza would really be on him lol . Jake your awesome dude thank you for making videos regardless of free pizza or not😂
I still cannot understand why Concord was a PVP hero shooter of all things. It would be way more unique and cool if it had been a co-op mission-based game about hunting bounties as a crew on a spaceship. That idea fulfills the GOTG fantasy so much more than "Overwatch from Wish"
Such a good point about not having enough time to play everything - I played valorant for a couple months and now I’m off that bc other games have come out. Idk what these companies are thinking at this point…but capitalism is built on infinite growth and that’s just impossible for consumers to keep up.
Funny how Sony coulda switched gears and started pumping money into helldivers, but they probably saw the microtransactions in the game are all completely optional and not predatory at all and didn't think they could make billions off of it.
It'll be better if corporations finally give up on live services. I get that their profits are thin right now, but a simpler way to fix that would be to cut down on graphic costs.
9:20 I feel like next year is obviously going to be good there’s so many bangers coming out and on top of that gta 6
All I want from 2025 is for so many studios to not be shut down, especially after only one questionable release. Go back to the 2000’s or even the early 2010’s and you’ll see so many companies that hard to get their toes wet before they went swimming. If Rocksteady shut down after a mediocre PS2 game, we never would have gotten Arkham. If FromSoftware shut down after some adequate games for years, we never would have gotten Souls. If a game flops, there should be equal responsibility placed on executives rather than developers. I’m just tired of hearing about talented people losing their jobs
Between work and family lives, I only have an hour or 2 a day to game if I get that chance and I already got my hero shooter I fall back on when I don’t have something to play, I definitely would have checked it out if it was free but im not gonna waste $40 on another hero shooter in a sea of free ones
Gimme a good multiplayer shooter with a crapton of maps and good gameplay without these crazy shooter hero types but great styles suited to the maps
The 40$ price tag always weirded me out since they announced the release and price. It almost felt like they saw the success of Helldivers and thought they set a new standard on pricing live service games. They immediately jumped on board with the new $70 precedent set by COD so that’s why it makes sense to me if they tried the $40 price point for a game that barely even had preorders. Sucks to see the studio shut down, I hope they all find worthwhile endeavors that doesn’t work them into dust
All I'm hearing is that executives make the bad ideas and devs have to pay for the bad ideas.
You are wrong Jake, the game had a target audience and that was pretty much only the people working at Firewalk
No you are wrong, the target audience was 7 years ago, the problem was timing, being incredibly late to the party
They will never admit or acknowledge the fact that the modern audience “activists “ don’t play video games let alone shooters , and Jake has never addressed the elephant in the room. You’re not wrong don’t let these people gaslight you into thinking that it’s anything other than that .
Cenciende9401 NOBODY 7 years ago would have bought this. That art was the biggest pile of garbage that I've ever seen! There is no "hook" to it and acting like people don't have standards in art style is asking to be proven wrong.
some of my favorite games have been made by single developers or small teams. they tend to be more focused and have more love for what they are creating.
As well as more unique game mechanics I feel like
More focused yet open to make the game they want.
Keep your toxic crap to yourself, no less love goes into any other game, it's a matter of how many cooks are in the kitchen, every single person in the kitchen is there out of love for what they do even if there are 100 of them
@@cenciende9401 do you need a hug? as far as your request for me to keep my opinions to myself. NO
I think it's a trend for studios to put things in games they know players will hate. Not only are the characters horrible, there's no way I could spend 5 minutes in the game with those colors all over the place. The purple is the ugliest purple I've ever seen. There's good games out there. No one needs games like this.
Gaming growth expanding in 2025 only makes sense as Switch 2.0 should be out next year.
If not i have my doubts it will grow with how hard things are for everyone
Pure hubris. "They'll buy whatever we put out" mentality
I’m still blasting away on helldivers 2 🤘🏻😈
I really was hoping they would figure out how to make Concord a single-player story game. I enjoyed the Guardians of the Galaxy vibe of that first trailer, but I basically never play online.
yea bo6 campaign is fun, the story is a little stupid and unreal but I can't stop playing it 😂
2025 has the potential to be the greatest year for gaming, you have GTA 6, Monster Hunter Wilds, Doom The Dark Ages, Metroid Prime 4, Death Stranding 2, etc. Plus, we don't know what games the Switch successor will launch with.
I do. Well, at least two games. ;)
2024 just reached its nadir moment in gaming with the release of Ubisoft’s NFT strategy game. Things can only get better from here…
11:57 I am 30 and have lost my competitive online gaming want too but I love cod campaigns! I also only play battlefield 2042 bots 😂🙋🏾♂️
If these companies can learn what the average games wants and doesn’t want than it will get better. Unfortunately making a good game isn’t the only thing on their agenda and usually not even the most important thing
Ahh it's not a new thing about teams getting smaller, Konami has been doing this since like 2010 since I worked at Castlevania Lords of Shadow. They were outsourcing everything to Spain for the past 15+ years.
I think analysts are probably looking at switch 2 and gta 6, but I would love to also have a banger year of releases and to be flushed with extras cash as well
Not trippin about games being slower this year when so many dropped last year.
This happened in 2010 - a lot of games were cancelled and funding dried up for games after the global crash. Of course... publishers suddenly found they had a lack of games to release a few years later. It's definitely a phenomenon.
I'm so glad concord and the studio got shutdown, now someone needs to sue sweet baby inc for destroying everything they touch
Yep your totally right but it won't stop
you love you some Jason Schreier don’t you 😅
I've seen the argument that future game devs are learning bad habits and bad storytelling playing todays games, and it makes sense... except the devs making concord, that vampire one i can't even remember the name of, the day before, etc. Are theoretically the people who grew up learning from stuff like the first last of us, mass effect, etc. My hope is future devs get tired of this slop and are given motivation to create timeless stories we haven't seen for a while now.
Less than a week to go, and no official endorsement of Mario / Luigi or Ratchet / Clank? Not even a comment on either’s…PLATFORM??
Are you guys on gameranx or you here gonna talk about the new dragon age? Ive been waiting to see what you think about it. I heard they only gave the media that would give high review scores only got a review copy of the game so guessing gameranx didn't get that 😅
we'll have some impressions up after launch
@JakeBaldino great thanks! You're the best 🤌🏻🤌🏻
It's bad.
there are way too many god damn high priority games coming in february, a couple of them gotta move or they'z all gon die.
I hope more studios shut down next year, not because I want the world to burn but so that the remaining studios will go back to their roots of appealing to what gamers want instead of just focusing on how they can milk every penny from gamers, the greed and political woke stuff has to go! If that means more studios shutting down then so be it, it will give way and room for other studios that actually care about making good fun games that gamers enjoy a chance to flourish. Keep on boycotting these corrupt studios and supporting those that actually care and love what they do and want you to enjoy yourself, only then can gaming return to its former glory.
wait. "seasoned devs" made Concord? I don't think they even deserve that title.
the devs worked on games like Halo, Mass Effect, CoD, Apex Legends and the studio was founded by ex Bungie devs. They were definitely veterans and deserved the title.
Thanks!
GTA 6 is a time bomb that every game company have to be weary of. Heck, I imagine PS5 consoles sales skyrocket months before it release(or whenever that is announced)
Somehow managed to get a sealed copy of concord for 50 cad (about 40 us)
"there's only so much time for live service games" should be hot iron stamped on the face of executives so they can see that every time they look themselves in the mirror. Helldivers 2 was actually a miracle that it worked, but it had a certain x factor. If the market is not already at saturation, it's not far off. So, for a live service game to succeed, another one (like Destiny) needs to take a fall, or at the very best for all to share slices of the pie (market). There were live games that were actually good and still failed due to (over)saturation.
Bottom line: going for a live service game now is like getting into the crypto market now with a new coin.
I actually watched Jason S. On Adam Conovers podcast where they were talking about what feels like a downfall in gaming. And he brought up Team Sizes there too, the real crux of a lot of issues. Good call-out Jake!
Hey any comment on all this dragon age drama? Since I trust yall so much I’ve been watching out for your review. Were you one of the ones that didn’t get a review code?
I find consulting firms might be a big waste of money maybe Sony should put that money towards good writers and artists.
This just in "Microsoft acquires fire walk studios and revives Concord"
ngl it's been a weird gaming year for me. I've never played a hero shooter before and absolutely fell in love with Concord, particularly it's design elements and more casual competitive side that's encouraged varied game. On the other hand, Helldivers II was great for me at launch but got incredibly tiresome incredibly fast to the point where I actually dislike it at this point. I recognize I'm not the average gamer, but when Concord came out it felt like something truly made for me and I'm crushed that it's gone.
The team size may be an issue, but only in some cases. You point out rightfully so the distance and the communication. These are cases where you mess up a lot of things if not planning carefully, and once you mess up there is no coming back. But for the case specifically of Concord, it was just a mix of a bland game where they asked for 40 bucks and nobody really wanted it.
I literally just switched my FFXIV sub to try out WoW for the first time in 15 years lol. There's truly not enough time in the day to play all the games
What happened with Sony and Concord reminds me of the fairy tale "The Emperor has no clothes".
A game (and failure) that I find kinda has some overlap with Concord is Battlefield 5's Firestorm mode. It came out during a time when BR games were a dime a dozen, but instead of it being free like most BR games you had to pay to play Firestorm via ownership of the BF5 base game. BF5 was also panned (particularly at launch) for its poor/uninteresting character design just like Concord, and obviously the support for Firestorm was dropped earlier than intended just like Concord's was, even though Firestorm of course had a better run.
I think the market strategy for both really hurt them, particularly Firestorm. Where I think they really differ is that I don't know if making Concord free would have changed the tepid reception it received, and I don't think the game would've stuck around for long even if that was their approach. Just didn't have the right bones and design, and I think that's super unfortunate.